Weekend Edition Sunday

Schedule

88.5-1

Sunday

8:00 am

Weekend Edition Sunday premiered on January 18, 1987, and was the last of NPR's major newsmagazines to hit air. Since then, Weekend Edition Sunday has covered newsmakers and artists, scientists and politicans, music makers of all kinds, writers, thinkers, theologians and all manner of news events. Hosted by Rachel Martin.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Director Rian Johnson is known for his 2005 high school noir flick Brick. His new movie, Looper, jumps 30 years into a grim future for a twisty thriller involving time traveling assassins. Johnson says time travel stories are intensely relatable, because everyone wonders about their past.

Susan Isaacs' latest novel revolves around Gloria Garrison, a 79-year-old CEO with a multimillion-dollar makeover business. Isaacs says her female characters don't need to be likable, but they should "fight for something beyond themselves."

In his new book, New Yorker film critic David Denby bemoans what digital and global filmmaking has done to the industry. "[Movies] have to play in Bangkok and Bangalore ... as well as Bangor, Maine," he says. "The local flavor has gone out of them."

When referees make bad calls, the athlete who gets the better deal generally won't make a correction. But the way the public reacts to those athletes can be different in the U.S. than it is abroad. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mike Pesca.

In recent months, suspected insurgents have been turning on their U.S. and NATO trainers in a series of insider attacks. There have been more than 50 this year, including an apparent insider attack on Sunday. Host Rachel Martin talks with Seth Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO.

Colorado is one of a handful of battleground states which could tip this year's election. President Obama won the state in 2008, but polls suggest a tighter contest this election year. Host Rachel Martin talks with Judy Strogoff, editor-publisher of The Colorado Statesman, a weekly nonpartisan political paper based in Denver.

Wednesday, President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney will face each other on the same stage for the first time. It will be one of three opportunities before the election. It could be one of the last opportunities for the candidates to sway voters who haven't yet made up their mind. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Scott Horsley and Ari Shapiro, who have been on the trail with the Romney and Obama campaigns.

Just days away from a crucial parliamentary election, the Republic of Georgia has been shaken by the appearance of a video that allegedly shows human-rights abuses in the country's prisons. NPR's Corey Flintoff reports that the video appeared on a television channel connected to a billionaire who is President Mikheil Saakashvili's main opponent.

Every answer today is a six-letter word or name that has a repeated two-letter pair, like "eraser," which has E-R twice, or "regret," which has R-E twice. The repeated pair of letters can appear anywhere in the word. You'll be given the pair of letters and a clue, and you provide the words.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Every answer is the name of a TV show past or present. Each can be found in consecutive letters in the sentences read. Name the TV shows. For example, in the sentence "We watched the acrobat many times," the hidden TV show is BATMAN. Hint: Each answer has at least six letters.

The Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020 if nothing is done to alleviate the situation there, a recent U.N. report found. By almost every indicator, Palestinians in Gaza today are worse off than they were in the 1990s — squeezed by a high birthrate, dwindling resources and trade and travel restrictions.

Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi has been honored and celebrated on her first visit to the U.S. in 40 years. In various speeches, she's talked about learning to compromise with former military men in Myanmar's parliament who kept her under house arrest for years.

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